Читать книгу A History of China - Morris Rossabi - Страница 35

Mo Zi (ca. 470–391 BCE) also responded to the chaos of the times, but his diagnosis and prescriptions diverged markedly from those of the Confucians and Daoists. Little is known of Mo Zi’s own life or his writings, which his immediate disciples and later Mohists supplemented, edited, and revised. For almost three centuries, his ideas competed, with some success, with Confucianism, but Mohism’s own limitations, as well as the appeal of the Confucian ethical code, led to its decline after the second century BCE, save for in small and dedicated bands who owed absolute obedience to the supreme leaders of their respective groups.

Mo Zi’s failure to attract a wide following may have resulted from his principal concerns. Looking at a strife-torn China, he emphasized profit and universal love as a means of restoring stability and peace. He offered a simple utilitarian test for evaluation of behavior: he lauded conduct that provided material benefit or that resulted in the greatest profit for the greatest number. Productive use of resources was equated with moral value. Thus, Mo Zi denounced waste, urging the elimination of costly expenditures. The Confucian advocacy of elaborate and expensive funeral and marital ceremonies scandalized him and exacerbated his antipathy for what he perceived to be Confucianism’s corrupting influences on men. The emphasis on music and on the finest food and drink in rituals struck him as overly lavish and extravagant. For Mo Zi, the most wasteful human activity was warfare because of the harm it inflicted on people and the destruction it wrought on the land. He reviled aggressors because expansionist aims would divert leaders’ attention from internal affairs and farmers’ attention from work on the land, not to mention the damage such aims would cause to horses, weapons, chariots, and supplies. His condemnation of offensive war was based primarily upon its destruction and waste, and less so upon ethical concerns. Because aggressive wars were unprofitable, good rulers ought to shun them.

These pragmatic considerations entailed indirect criticism of contemporary rulers and aristocrats. Mo Zi objected to their abuses – wastefulness in useless and costly rituals and in destructive military conflicts. He appeared on the surface to reflect the aspirations and values of the lower and middle classes, for they suffered disproportionately from the excesses of the aristocracy and from warfare. Moreover, his obsession with waste, his denunciation of needless consumption, and his opposition to elegant and expensive refinements coincided with the interests of the common people. He also represented their needs in asserting that rulers should appoint capable and virtuous men to positions in government, which implied that merit, not birth, should be the principal criterion. Like the Confucians, he argued that aristocratic background ought not to be a prerequisite for prominence in government; worthiness and ability were more crucial.

Yet his identification with the common people clashed with the means he used to promote his views. Like Confucius, Mencius, and many other philosophers of this era, he traveled from one state to another to persuade rulers and aristocrats to adopt and implement his philosophy. Thus, he could not afford to alienate his prospective patrons by calling for radical changes in the social system. Because such an effort would be self-defeating, he moderated his diatribes against the aristocracy and the elite, instead urging subordinates to avoid engaging in class warfare. In short, he accepted the idea of a hierarchy and undermined his own views on esteeming the worthy and recruiting them in government, believing that the vast majority of those at the bottom would simply accept their lot because the head of the local community and the lord of the region knew what was best. Mo Zi left it to the existing leadership to curb the excesses of the aristocracy and to select good men from whatever class to help the rulers govern. This injunction of obedience to superiors naturally made his views less threatening to the elite.

Mo Zi’s advocacy of universal love also would not challenge the existing social hierarchy: it was simply a vehicle for ameliorating conflicts between the strata. He criticized the Confucian particularistic doctrine of different levels of devotion, which emphasized love for the family above all else, with less emphasis on affection for the clan and other Chinese who were unrelated. His more generous vision encouraged loving Chinese men and women of other families and even non-Chinese as heartily as one loved one’s parents or family. Such unselfishness countered the particularism of mere love of family and of filial piety. However, Mo Zi undercut some of the credit he might have secured for this remarkable and benevolent concept by justifying it on simplistic grounds. He stressed that universal love would result in material benefits and could readily be mandated by forceful rulers. The idealism and innovation of this grand conception did not emerge in Mo Zi’s practical description. He failed to portray a vision that could galvanize and inspire his followers.

He and his disciples linked their championing of universal love to their condemnation of offensive warfare. They encouraged fellow Mohists to support and to come to the defense of weaker states threatened by bellicose states. Manifesting their love for the less powerful and the endangered, they sided with the weak and ultimately became skilled in warfare, earning a reputation as adept military strategists. Yet Mo Zi surely did not have this in mind when he first expounded his views about universal love and the destructiveness and wastefulness of warfare.

Another questionable ramification of his views related to his attempted justification of his moral order. He repeatedly appealed to the supernatural as a force that sanctioned his vision. Believing that spirits and ghosts could intervene in human affairs, he asserted that they could punish or reward behavior. The Supreme Spirit was the dominant deity, the progenitor of all creatures, which worked its will through its earthly representative, the Son of Heaven. Mo Zi, seeking to induce fear, depicted the Supreme Spirit as awesome. This turn to the supernatural did not jibe with the developing rationalism of this era and may have alienated potential adherents.

Mohism’s appeal was also undermined by other flaws, one of which was confusion concerning the audience for Mo Zi’s views. He was critical of the lifestyles and morals of the aristocracy and many of the ideas he expounded, including his abhorrence of waste and his utilitarianism, reflected lower-class or middle-class attitudes. Yet he devoted much of his career to appeals to the aristocracy, which contributed to a blurring of his message and confusion and contradictions in his philosophy. Moreover, Mohism was too simplistic for many aristocrats. Mo Zi’s repeated injunctions against waste and luxury did not endear him to the elite, nor did his references to ghosts and spirits mesh with the growing rationalism and secularism of the age. Similarly, his emphasis on universal love clashed with the Chinese esteem of family. Finally, his utilitarianism did not offer a systematic, cohesive morality. The repetitiousness of his style also diminished its wider appeal. In short, Mo Zi did not identify sufficiently with any specific group or class in China, nor did he take into account Chinese sensitivities and sensibilities.